Posted
by
Zonk
on Thursday November 02, 2006 @06:58PM
from the why-can't-i-think-of-scams-like-this dept.

eldavojohn writes "As many of you know, the JPEG image compression is actually proprietary. This has resulted in many lawsuits between its owner, Forgent Networks, and other companies that have used it. Yesterday Microsoft and about 60 other defendants settled with Forgent to the tune of $8 million. For a company with annual revenues of $15 million, that's nothing to sneeze at. You haven't heard the last of Forgent yet, as the article states, 'It is currently pursuing claims against cable companies over a patent that it says covers technology inside digital video recorders.' Sounds like that one could be worth a little bit of cash, wouldn't you think?"

The problem is, even if you were to reverse-engineer the Windows Media codecs, they have patents on the *algorithms themselves*. Which is the same issue with the JPEG patent. You can reverse-engineer it all you want, but if it actually WORKS, it's almost guaranteed to infringe on MS's patents.

It's similar to the old Nintendo tactic from the NES days. The NES system checked each cartridge to see if it had a bit of copyrighted text (Yes, plain text. Not code.)that Nintendo inserted into every cartridge they made. If that copyrighted text wasn't present, the cartridge didn't work. This prevented third-parties from manufacturing NES cartridges, because how could they put Nintendo's copyrighted text into their ROMs legally, without Nintendo's permmission, which they never gave to anyone? They couldn't.